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Today's
Stories
January 17 / 18, 2003
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 17 / 18, 2004
Bad Days at Indian
Point
Inside
America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Power Plant
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
These are desperate days for Entergy, the big
Arkansas-based power conglomerate that owns the frail Indian
Point nuclear plant, located on the east bank of the Hudson River
outside Buchanan, New York-just 22 miles from Manhattan.
First, a scathing report by a nuclear
engineer fingered Indian Point as one of five worst nuclear plants
in the United States and predicted that its emergency cooling
system "is virtually certain to fail."
This damning disclosure was hotly followed
by the release of a study conducted by the Los Alamos National
Laboratory for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which ominously
concluded that the chances of a reactor meltdown increase by
nearly a factor of 100 at Indian Point because the plant's drainage
pits (also known as containment sumps) are "almost certain"
to be blocked with debris during an accident.
"The NRC has known about the containment
sump problem at Indian Point since September 1996, but currently
plans to fix it only by March 2007," says David Lochbaum,
a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists
who. "The NRC cannot take more than a decade to fix a safety
problem that places millions of Americans at undue risk."
Entergy and the NRC both downplayed the
meltdown scenario and defended the leisurely pace of the planned
repairs, which won't start until 2007. Entergy says that there's
no rush to fix the problems with the emergency system because
a breakdown isn't likely in the first place.
But that's flirting with almost certain
disaster. Entergy and the NRC are staking the lives of millions
on odds of a single water pipe not breaking under pressure. The
problem is that these very kinds of pipes have corroded and been
breached at other nuclear plants featuring similar pressurized
water design. At the Davis-Bessie plant near Toledo, Ohio, a
vessel head on one of the cooling water pipes had been nearly
corroded away by acid and was dangerously close to rupturing.
The cooling water in these pipes is kept
at a pressure of 2,200 pounds per square inch. If a pipe breaks,
the 500-degree water would blow off as steam, tearing off plant
insulation and coatings. The escaped water will pour into the
plant's basement, where sump pumps are meant to draw the water
back into the reactor core. But the Los Alamos tests showed that
the cooling water would collect debris along the way that will
clog up the mesh screens on the pipes leading back into the reactor.
If this happens, the cooling of the reactor fuel would stop,
the radioactive core would start to melt and the plant will belch
a radioactive plume that will threaten millions downwind.
All this would happen very fast. The
Indian Point 2 reactor would exhaust all of its cooling water
in less than 23 minutes, while the number 3 reactor would consume
all of its water in only 14 minutes. Try getting a nuclear plumber
that quickly.
Yes, it sounds trite, but that's essentially
what Entergy proposes as its quick fix to the meltdown scenario.
Jim Steets, Entergy's spokesman on Indian Point matters, told
the New York Times last month that the company was training its
workers to scour the plant for flaking paint and potential debris
and that if an accident occurred they would pump the water into
the core more slowly, a plan that would buy plant managers and
executives a few more minutes to flee the scene.
Where people would go and how they would
get there in the event of a nuclear meltdown or other radioactive
release at Indian Point is unclear. In September 2002, New York
Governor George Pataki commissioned a report on Indian Point's
evacuation plan. He picked James Lee Witt, the former Rose Law
Firm attorney who served as head of FEMA during the Clinton administration,
to oversee the investigation. At the time, Pataki said that he
would support closure of the plant if Witt's report revealed
that communities near the plant could not be safely evacuated.
Witt submitted his report on January
10, 2003. While somewhat timid and cautious, Witt concluded that
Entergy's off-site evacuation plans for Indian Point were woefully
inadequate.
Witt wrote: "It is our conclusion
that the current radiological response system and capabilities
are not adequate to overcome their combined weight and protect
the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event
of a release from Indian Point, especially if the release is
faster or larger than the design basis release."
In the end, Witt concluded that it was
not possible to fix the evacuation plan, given the problems at
the plant, the density of the nearby communities and looming
security threats.
This sobering scenario was followed by
news that a review of the company's security record revealed
that Entergy, in cahoots with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
faked a test designed to determine whether the plant is vulnerable
to a terrorist attack.
In an August letter, the NRC assured
members of Congress that Entergy had developed a "strong
defensive strategy and capability" for the plant and passed
with flying colors a so-called "force-on-force" test,
a mock assault.
In turns out, however, that the NRC gave
Entergy officials months of advance warning about the test and
then, as the Indian Point team cribbed for the exam, dumbed down
the assault to ensure that they would pass.
Most assessments by the CIA and other
intelligence agencies suggest that an assault on a nuclear plant
would require a squad-sized force of between 12 and 14 attackers,
who would assault the plant by night, armed with explosives,
machine guns with armor-penetrating bullets, and rocket-propelled
grenades.
This isn't the attack that was repelled
by the Entergy security team. Instead, Entergy's men battled
off a squad of 4 mock terrorists, armed only with hunting rifles,
who assaulted the plant in broad daylight. Moreover, the attacking
squad weren't former Delta Force operatives trained in terrorist
tactics, but security officers from a nearby nuclear plant who
assault the plant from only one point after crossing open fields
in plain view of Indian Point's security guards.
Just to make sure that there were no
surprises, the Entergy security team, which consisted largely
of guards hired only for the test, was warned that a mock attack
would take place sometime within the next hour. Even under these
rigged conditions, Entergy barely passed the security test.
Environmentalists and anti-nuke activists
living near the plant hoped this would be the final straw for
the aging reactor. They marshaled their evidence of safety violations,
inept evacuation plans and lax security and headed off to offices
of the most powerful Democrat in America, Hillary Clinton.
But Hillary has remained about reserved
as Pataki on Indian Point, issuing robotic requests for more
studies but refusing to call for the plant's closure. Not that
her words mean much. Last month, she pledged to filibuster the
nomination of Utah governor Mike Leavitt for director of the
EPA. She ended up voting to confirm his nomination.
Of course, Hillary's ties to Entergy
are almost primal. The Little Rock-based Entergy Corporation,
which once employed John Huang, the infamous conduit to the Lippo
Group, was one of Bill Clinton's main political sponsors, shoveling
more than $100,000 into his political coffers from 1992 to 1996.
The more plaintive the cries for Indian
Point's closure, the more money Entergy spreads around to politicians
with reputation for flexibility in these matters. Already this
year, Entergy's New York Political Action Committee-ENPAC New
York-has doled out more than $25,000 to New York politicians
alone. Everyone got into the act from Pataki and Clinton to Democratic
congressman Eliot Engel to lowlier footsoldiers for the nuclear
plant, including two state assemblymen, commissioners from Westchester
and Orange counties, Bronx Borough president Adolfo Carrion and
state comptroller Alan Hevesi, whose election campaign was endorsed
by the Sierra Club.
Political money isn't the only tool in
Entergy's bag of tricks. In late October, community activists
in the Bronx reported that emissaries from Entergy were canvassing
black and Hispanic neighborhoods in New York City and Westchester
County with an ominous warning: if Indian Point closes, air quality
in urban areas will deteriorate and more blacks and Hispanics
will develop respiratory illnesses. The Entergy reps told people
that new coal-fired power plants would be built in their neighborhoods
and urged them to sign a petition.
"In recent years, nearly all proposals
for new power plants in New York state have been in or adjacent
to areas with high concentrations of people of African descent
and Latinos," a memo handed out at the door warns. There
is, naturally, much truth to this claim. and Entergy is in a
unique position to know. since throughout the southeast it has
targeted its power plants in black neighborhoods, where it has
heralded them as bringing economic engines for impoverished communities.
The canvassers also carried cellphones
as they went from door to door. They hit the speed dial number
of a local legislator, handed the phone to the resident and then
prompted them on how to express their concerns about the possible
closure of Indian Point.
The petition drive, which discreetly
by-passed the 13 predominately white districts in Westchester
County, was run by a group calling itself by the lofty-sounding
name: the Campaign for Affordable Energy, Environmental &
Economic Justice. The group was supposedly based in Manhattan.
In fact, it was created and wholly funded by Entergy.
"This is a sham front group fabricated
by the nuclear industry to scare black and low income people,"
says Susan Tolchin, a staffer for Westchester County Executive
Andrew Spano, who supports closing the Indian Point plant. "It's
an outrageous and disgusting attempt to exploit the minority
community for corporate greed."
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature.
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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